Aircon in primary school

[littegi08]

Hi, my daughter came back home saying how hot it was in the classroom. The teacher did not allow fans and turned the lights off. As a result my daughter was hot and was unable to read because it was so dark. Does your school have aircon and do you believe it is a necessity? Thanks

I was in a school all day today, at no point was it too hot. I've been in when it's been far, far hotter there than today.

My kids went to school in the Caribbean. No air con... and the secondary school's uniform was jeans!

They had fans. Well, one per room. In theory. In reality they were almost never on cos they were dusty/noisy/broken.

Yes the buildings aren't built like in the UK but trust me, it was sweltering in those classrooms, just like it was everywhere. My kids adapted, like we all did. And it was much hotter and more humid than the UK.

Like mandatory breakfast clubs and free school meals are fully funded centrally 😂

This
school budgets are so tight!!!
The PTA top up on lots of extras, things like toilet rolls, stationery, exercise books, text books all sorts of things.
if people weren’t kind and didn’t donate things it would be a lot worse but air con is unlikely to be on the wish list!!
do you have this at home @littegi08

Went to school and taught in California and very few of the classrooms had air conditioning.

I would be very surprised to find it in classrooms here.

We chipped in with a few other parents and got aircon installed in the year reception and year 1 classrooms that were in a ‘temporary’ building they’d been using for 30 years. It did the heat as well and saved the school a lot of money and kept the kids cool. The first year we were called to collect the kids 8 times at 12 because it was too hot for them.

Isn't the problem shit design by architects who are obsessed by large areas of glass. Look at how buildings are built in countries where it is really hot, thick walls, large roof overhangs paint the buildings white to reflect the sun and heat, it's not rocket science, but it's not going to win an award from the society of wanky architects, who are more concerned with style than function.

My classroom was baking this afternoon - it's on the top floor, facing west, has big windows which only open about 10cm for safety reasons. It was "only" 27⁰ outside, no idea what temp it reached inside, but it was definitely much hotter than outside.
I drew the blinds early, opened the windows to let cooler air in, but by afternoon there is nothing that helps. The children flop about looking sweaty and complaining about doing any work; half of them have mini fans or are flapping paper fans at themselves.
It's unbearably stifling if it's probably 24⁰+ outside. It's not that unusual in the summer to reach these temperatures. If it gets up around 30⁰ by the afternoon then kids won't do anything. Having 30+ people in a relatively small space creates a surprisingly high amount of additional heat too.
You can think it's wimpish but I'm pretty sure many people would struggle to work well in these conditions.

I would have thought that’s only new schools have air con. Surely there’s no money in the pot for anything like that in state schools, we’ll struggle to afford to fix the heating in ours when it eventually packs up. It was ridiculously hot in our classroom today, we have a windows the full length of the room and the sun shines through them for most of the afternoon, we pull the blinds down but that just seems to heat the room up more. It’s awful. I’m really dreading the last term
in there!

Hi yes the teacher pulled down down the blinds and turned off the lights in the classroom. My daughter was straining her eyes to read. We do have aircon at home and it is a lifesaver.

Very sensible of teacher IMO. How old is your daughter?

in half term now?

So she just taught in the dark? That sounds likely 🙄

I have one of those portable air con units which you stick a pipe out of the window and it costs up to £50 a week in summer, but it would be unbearable in my boiling hot high floor flat without it. So no, I don’t think every primary should cost the tax payer the cost of installing and running. It’s not pleasant but we don’t get that many unbearable days.

It’s worth noting that single pipe machines are horribly inefficient, since they are constantly extracting air from the room (air that has just been cooled) and drawing in warm air from elsewhere to replace it. Permanent installations do not suffer from this limitation.

My dc went to school in Australia and not only was there no air con but the roof of the school was made of metal. Which is surprisingly normal. And this wasn’t in the bush in the seventies. It was Melbourne a decade ago.

Schools pay their own bills though. It’s freezing in some schools in the winter because they don’t have endless cash for heating.

Our primary has aircon in most rooms. It's got big windows and the classrooms got very hot.

Are you from the uk?

People in the south of England need to get a grip and start introducing measures to cope with extreme heat

Hahaha! What a hoot! They won’t even fund the yearly 4% teachers pay rise never mind bloody air con!

Aircons are standard in all schools in Australia. Used in the summer for cooling, and heating in winter. In hospitals especially airconditioning is mandatory. The UK is very backward in this respect.

Some schools here do have air con, but they certainly didn't when I was at school and we have hot weather here for much longer periods than you do in the UK. Also, how could it possibly be dark - did the room have no windows

Do you have AC at work and in the shops you frequent?

That's the comparison here.

Nope, it's not right.